Something missing in "iLife"

macrumors regular

So today I had a thought and wanted to share it, collaborate, and see what others thought about it. I've been on multiple sides of the music world. I've recorded with Jason Cropper, Paul Levvit, Tim Kimsey and a few others. I spent a summer with Tim and Dustin Hendricks learning protools when I got into recording. At the same time I have also been the musician doing regional and other decently sized tours and the work that comes along with not only performing but also with managing and keeping 4 people on top of their game. I have also been the fan of many bands.
It's not surprising that things like social media, youtube, iTunes and the like have vastly reshaped the industry. The experience I had in managing my own band along with a few others we were trying to help at the time was finding the best way to present our press kits to venues and labels. Those more digitally inclined than myself may say no big deal, that is what photoshop is for. Well what do you do after photoshop? When I left that band to focus on other things there were not a lot of options. You either made an EPK (electronic press kit) or a hard copy press kit. The hard copy press kit obviously has it's downfalls as they are more expensive to distribute logistically, take more time to get to the intended party, and are more expensive to reproduce. However, they do appear more professional generally. The EPK has as many downfalls starting with which one is best between sonicbids, pure volume, myspace, Facebook, youtube, etc. Unfortunately a venue or label generally will go through one of the above as opposed to spending all day going through each. Naturally all of these have their own strong points, aside from possibly myspace now. The other conundrum are the plethora of other media sites dedicated to bands like indie on move, last fm, pandora, etc that add different forms of connection between bands, fans and promoters. However none of these do all of these things well.

What if hypothetically there was a program to connect the vast industry of music based on EPKs rather than status, walls, pictures, videos, etc. I think if it were centralized on this and accounts setup for the type of user all of these people could be connected in a more productive way.

For instance what do they want to see:

Fans:
live streams
pictures
videos
music
book tickets
buy music/ merchandise/ etc
comment/ like/ subscribe/ in some form communicate to the bands they like

Recording engineers:
The ability to communicate with bands, and sell recording time
List their equipment
Pictures of studios
Samples of work

Venues:
Promote shows
Sell tickets
Book bands

The idea is expansive and there are many things I'm leaving out but currently there are no programs/ websites that do this very effectively. THe possibilities could be endless. Most bands have at least one member in the group with a smart phone and a lot will have access to a mac. These computers and devices already have access to youtube, garageband, Facebook, instagram, tumblr, flikr, pure volume, iPhoto, Calender, iMovie, iDvd, iTunes, etc.

so on to the idea in more depth:
multiple types of user accounts (fans, live sound, engineers, bands, promoters, venues)
very clean ui, intuitive, easy to setup up, expand, change, and add
The ability to interact with the cloud and update on the go: like your calendar, itunes store, videos, this could be invaluable.
Links to all your accounts in one place.

There is no reason to have a press kit that does all of these things, that is silly but to have one that integrates them would be incredible for everyone in a band, fans, etc.

For instance a bands press kit really only needs to hold a few photos,a bio, recordings, list of shows played etc. Then off of this press kit the viewer (venue, label etc) could go straight to there youtube, Facebook, instagram or whatever for more info on the band.

If there had been something clean like this for me to use it would have been invaluable. I was just curious what you guys thought.

I think the ability to submit bids for gigs, book bands etc alone while at the same time still using it as an entertainment hub for bands would make it surpass some of the above mentioned current platforms.

macrumors 604

That is called making a website. You don't want to have a website for all those things, it really doesn't work. You won't get the right artists/bands jumping on board, nor will you get the engineers and venues that really matter and know what they're doing. I used to go on PureVolume as a fan, but I got so much band spam vs actual interaction that it wasn't worth my time.

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